Ashley Wagner was about to begin her long program at the Japan Open earlier this month when she began to panic, blindsided by what she called her “mid-career, mid-life crisis.”

The two-time U.S. figure skating champion had made the mistake of looking around that ice, noticing that some of her long-time rivals were now making themselves comfortable in the television commentary booths while a new generation of competitors barely in their teens seemed to explode off the ice into head-turning jumps all around her.

Although just 23, Wagner was suddenly feeling very old.

“The old gal hanging around,” Wagner said.

“Emotionally it was the worst ever,” Wagner continued, recalling the moment before the mistake-filled performance in Saitama, Japan. “My generation was moving on and here were these babies now with all these amazing (skills) and who weren’t even born yet when I started competing. That’s who I was competing with now. And I have to adjust to that.”

The lesson?

“Focus on myself,” she said. “I shouldn’t be worrying about the babies.”

A calmer and refocused Wagner takes the ice this weekend at Skate Canada, an ISU Grand Prix stop in Kelowna in British Columbia’s scenic Okanagan Valley. The two-day event is Wagner’s first major competition since finishing seventh at both the Olympic Games and World Championships last season. It is also the first significant step down a path she hopes will lead her back to the Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea in 2018.

“My short-term goal is my Fantasy Football team, which is doing really well,” Wagner, a 2014 Olympic bronze medalist in the team competition, said laughing. “Long term for now this is my dipping my toe into the water and seeing if this is something I want to do for four more years. I want to make a name for myself in this sport. I’m tired of being the big dark horse, the underdog (in Olympics and Worlds). I want to make myself a (consistent) part of the top five in the world. And that’s a very manageable goal.”

Wagner also knows that sentiment and conventional wisdom within figure skating are not on her side.

“Before I went to Japan I made the dumb mistake of reading stuff (in skating magazines and on websites),” Wagner said. “‘Why is Ashley Wagner still hanging on?’ ‘Why isn’t she retiring?’ That put a lot of doubt in my head. Then I started looking around. My generation seemed to have moved on to the rest of their careers. And there were all these babies who hadn’t even been conceived when I first started skating.

“(But) I still have things I want to accomplish in my (skating) career. But it’s something bigger than skating and I have to tune out all the questions, everybody asking ‘why are you doing this?’ Why? Because I want to and I love it. I get frustrated with this feeling not only in my sport but in the world in general of how everybody wants to (latch) onto the newest, the next brightest thing and stop appreciating something or somebody that has been able to hang in there for so long.

“People are so catty in this sport. They love to throw you off, love seeing people fail. I’m 23. That’s not old. In any other sport I would be not even in my prime. But there’s this stereotype in this sport (that women skaters are in their prime in their teens). I want to prove that stereotype wrong.”

Wagner, the first repeat U.S. women’s champion since Michelle Kwan nearly a decade earlier, also wants to erase the disappointment of an Olympic season she describes as her “year from hell.”

“Just a crazy season where everything that could have went wrong, went wrong,” she said.

It started with her coach John Nicks’ decision to retire from traveling, which sent Wagner scrambling to find a lead coach. She had no more started training with Rafael Arutunian when their primary training rink closed down. Her adjustment to Arutunian was made harder because her training time was often interrupted to meet obligations with corporate sponsors. A new long program wasn’t working. She had to share ice time with public skaters over the Christmas holidays, a key training period.

“By the time I go to nationals I was a nervous, stressed out bundle of energy,” Wagner said.

And it showed in a fourth-place finish at the U.S. Championships in Boston that left her competing in the Sochi Olympics in doubt. Although a selection committee sent her to Russia, Wagner remains haunted by thoughts of what she might have done in Sochi with a smoother run up.

Moving forward, Wagner’s new long program is set to music from “Moulin Rouge” and designed by Toronto-based choreographer Shae-Lynn Boure, who previously worked with 2006 Olympic champion Shizuka Arakawa and Olympic medalists Sasha Cohen, Kurt Browning and Joannie Rochette. Wagner at first was hesitant about the piece before developing a connection with it.

“It’s strong, passionate,” she said. “In a way it pays homage to my career, its ups and downs and this feeling of no matter how bad it gets the show must go on. It’s the perfect choice for me.”

Wagner’s short program to “Adagio” from “Spartacus” was choreographed by her longtime friend and training partner Adam Rippon, with a program-saving assist from choreographer Cindy Stuart.

“It started off great,” Wagner said of her collaboration with Rippon. “We’ve been friends for so long but before we knew it we were at each other’s throats. We were like this old married couple having so many little fights. We were making no progress. So finally Cindy came in as a marriage counselor and gave us some direction.”

Wagner also acknowledged there has been some tension between her and Arutunian since her poor performance in Saitama.

“After Japan, Rafa told me you’re never going to embarrass me like that again. All of sudden his evil twin came around and I was doing four run-throughs a day. He hasn’t been my favorite person lately,” Wagner said chuckling. “But he will be if I skate well in Skate Canada.

Scott M. Reid is a sports enterprise/investigative reporter for the Orange County Register. He also covers Olympic and international sports as well as the Los Angeles’ bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games. His work for the Register has led to investigations by the International Olympic Committee, the U.S. Department of Education, the California Legislature, and the national governing bodies for gymnastics and swimming. Reid's 2011 reporting on wide spread sexual abuse within USA Gymnastics and the governing body's failure to effectively address it led to Don Peters, coach of the 1984 record-setting Olympic team, being banned from the sport for life. His reporting also prompted USA Gymnastics to adopt new guidelines and policies dealing with sexual abuse. Reid's 2012 and 2013 reporting on sexual abuse within USA Swimming led to the banishment of two top level coaches. Reid has won 11 Associated Press Sports Editors awards for investigative reporting since 1999. He has also been honored by APSE for game writing, and enterprise, news, and beat reporting. He was an Investigative Reporters and Editors award finalist in 2002 and 2003. Prior to joining the Register in 1996, Reid worked for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Dallas Times Herald. He has a B.A. in the History of the Americas from the University of Washington.

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